Learn how to set objectives and guidelines for meeting regulations and requirements. Discover how to have proactive checks and balances. This will help identify goals and measures for accountability at all levels.
Planning (4.3), in the National Standard on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace, states, “The planning process is necessary to establish appropriate objectives and targets, and plans to achieve compliance with legal requirements, relevant regulations, organizational requirements, and a commitment to continual improvement”. The following information can help achieve this.
Role of a health and safety committee
Having a psychological health and safety (PHS) management system protects workers from psychological harm. According to the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (the National Standard), the first step is a health and safety committee. If you already have a health and safety committee, add the following to their list of responsibilities:
- Work hazard identification
- Psychological health and safety measures
Some organizations choose to create sub-committees to support these topics. Your health and safety committee will play an important role in your PHS management system and it’ll be their responsibility to:
- Ensure the committee’s mandate includes a focus on PHS.
- Become familiar with the factors that impact PHS at work.
- Be involved in the assessment of the organization’s baseline measure of PHS and make plans to address concerns. See Guarding Minds at Work for more information.
- Establish a process to bring forward general PHS issues at work.
- Establish a process for tracking and sharing the results of PHS related activities.
- Create a process for bringing committee concerns and issues to senior leadership for resolution.
- Help reduce stigma related to mental illness by supporting initiatives aimed at improving awareness among all staff.
- Focus on at-work PHS issues rather than individual employee mental health concerns.
- Ensure committee members receive training to respond appropriately and effectively to employees with mental health concerns. This would include referring employees to appropriate resources and maintaining confidentiality.
- Ask committee members to model behaviour that is psychologically healthy and safe.
Assessment – Establish a baseline
A baseline assessment means identifying hazards related to PHS at work. This can include using existing data. To help you begin, consider the following:
- Protect the privacy of individuals during data gathering by summarizing the averages, rather than individual statistics for reporting.
- Consider existing data measurements that may include:
- Turnover rates
- Numbers of complaints or grievances
- Disability, benefit, and Employee and Family Assistance Program data
- Rates of absenteeism
- Rates of problematic substance use
- Return-to-work and accommodation data
- Principal diagnostic categories for short- and long-term disabilities
- Review of accident and incident reports, employee complaints and investigations
- Results of organizational reviews or surveys
- Assess psychosocial factors at work. Use the free resources available in Guarding Minds at Work, which includes tools and guidelines for Assessment, Action and Evaluation.
- The free Sample audit tool | PDF highlights what your organization already has in place. It also considers what might be needed to meet the requirements of the National Standard. Most organizations are surprised by how much they have already contributed to a psychologically healthy and safe workspace. Remember to save the PDF on your computer before you fill in the form to keep the information you enter.
- Psychological health and safety policy recommendations helps you review the potential impacts to PHS at each stage of the employment life cycle.
- Review relevant laws related to:
- Human rights
- Occupational health and safety
- Violence and abuse prevention at work
- Labour and employment
- Employee compensation
- Standards, codes and guidelines
- Accessibility for persons with disabilities
- Look at best practices for your industry or association.
- • Review your existing Employee and Family Assistance Program to increase its responsiveness to mental health-related issues. Strategies are discussed in Employee assistance programs and mental health issues.
- Consider relevant scientific research.
Unable to find what you’re looking for? Don’t worry. No organization is likely to have easy access to all the data suggested above. Start by gathering the data that’s available and consider more data to collect in the future. Make a baseline report and use this data to track trends as you apply your PHS Management System. Use this information to adjust your approach or identify opportunities.
Set targets and objectives
There are many strategies that have the potential to improve PHS at work. These may also help to increase employee morale, and to reduce accidents, injuries and sick days. It can also help improve productivity, innovation and creativity. Choosing what’s most valuable to your organization and employees is an important part of planning. To help you begin, consider the following:
- Identify how you’ll address any psychological safety concerns that may exist, such as bullying, harassment, violence, or discrimination.
- There are a variety of ways to choose which psychosocial factors to address first:
- Areas of strength. This allows you to build on good work already done. For example, a high rating in psychological support is an opportunity for employees to share how they have felt supported at work. This can provide examples for everyone on how to contribute to a psychologically healthy and safe workspace.
- Areas of concern. This may help you to reduce risks first. For example, a low rating in psychological support may be an opportunity to review your accommodation and return-to-work policy. Make sure to take mental health into account.
- Areas where perceptions of management and employees differ. This may help you identify opportunities for improved communication and change. For example, maybe management feels that psychological support is an area of strength, but employees don't? You may wish to host focus groups that can help you understand the different perspectives and take action.
- Obtaining employee input. This can help provide guidance on the psychosocial factors perceived to be most important. It can show a commitment to meaningful employee participation. Some examples of participation include focus groups, staff or team meetings, or other chances for feedback and input.
Develop an implementation plan
Once you’ve completed an assessment and set objectives, it’s time to develop strategies for your implementation plan.
Strategies can include:
- Aligning with stated organizational goals or objectives
- Meeting identified organizational needs
- Specific tactics and actions related to the targeted goals and objectives
- Ideas from key participants including a formal planning committee, if appropriate
Include a detailed communication plan that outlines how and when employees will be informed and engaged. This should include a formal launch of the initiative, ongoing communication, updates, and milestones.
Develop a schedule for the measurement, analysis and sharing of results. Build in an approach to ongoing improvement that uses results to inform next steps.
Consider potential reactions to your plan: (adapted from Guarding Minds at Work)
- Appropriateness: Is the plan appropriate given the needs and resources of your organization?
- Acceptability: Is the plan acceptable to all relevant work stakeholders? This includes management, employees, union and clients.
- Accessibility: Is the plan available and accessible to all relevant work stakeholders? You might consider language and physical location.
- Effectiveness: Is the plan consistent with evidence that shows the outcomes are what your organization needs?
- Efficiency: Can the plan be implemented in a cost-effective and timely fashion?
- Safety: Could the plan present an unintended health or safety risk?
When your plan is complete, it’ll be time to begin implementation.
Strengthen existing initiatives
Most organizations have initiatives that contribute to a psychologically healthy and safe workspace. These can include wellness, employee engagement strategies, good management practices, staff social events, training, and benefits. Review what you have and then:
- Brainstorm opportunities for enhancement of existing initiatives. Use a group that mirrors work stakeholders. This includes managers, union representatives, workplace health and safety representatives and employees.
- Broaden or integrate existing initiatives into other areas of your organization.
- Embed good practice in policies and procedures. This can help ensure the sustainability of existing initiatives.
- Establish measures of effectiveness for each of the existing initiatives. Then set up a process for continual improvement.
- Expand the feedback loop. This makes sure more stakeholders are commenting on, participating in, and contributing.
Plan for effective evaluation
As you prepare to implement your PHS management system, it’s important to decide how and what you’ll measure. This helps determine if your plan is making a difference. See also Evaluation planning for psychological health and safety.
To help you begin, consider the following points:
- Decide the purpose of the evaluation. What are the commitments being measured? These could be accountability, quality improvement, specific outcomes, cost-effectiveness, uptake, or sustainability.
- Determine how you’ll receive input. This should include relevant stakeholders at all levels. That may be corporate decision-makers, supervisors, union representatives, occupational health representatives and employees.
- Identify short-term and long-term outcomes. Change takes time. Identify and share early wins, like how many participated and what was accomplished. This can help improve morale and commitment to the long-term process which you will measure against baseline data.
- Use short-term outcome evaluation results to modify the plan. These results can show you what’s working well, and what may need to be reconsidered and possibly changed.
- Collect long-term outcomes and use them to analyze the overall effectiveness of each part of your plan. Longer term outcomes should compare objectives with results. They'll use baseline data trends to determine the organizational impact of the initiatives. These trends might include reduced absenteeism, turnover and conflict, and improved employee engagement.
Set goals and measures for accountability
Setting measures for accountability helps ensure that all stakeholders are recognized for their contribution to a psychologically healthy and safe workspace.
- Have senior management provide an organization-wide directive. This would state that PHS is to be embedded in strategic decision-making and planning. This can be as simple as asking, “How might this decision impact the PHS of our employees?”
- Ensure managers understand their role for specific PHS outcomes. This should be part of each annual performance, management and departmental review.
- Establish positive incentives for managers who proactively address or resolve work issues that can also impact the bottom line:
- Effectively resolving conflict. Watch for those managers who most effectively resolve conflict and ask them to mentor others.
- Eliminating bullying and harassment incidents. Praise teams that model working together in a psychologically safe way.
- Increasing employee engagement. Recognize or reward those managers with the highest employee engagement scores.
- Improving return-to-work success. Recognize managers who have the highest percentage of successful and sustainable returns to work.
- Recognize contribution to PHS in performance reviews and salary incentives. You could ask everyone to report on how they contributed to PHS in the past year with specific examples. You could have a senior leader personally thank them, have a manager take them for lunch, or show some other form of recognition.
- Recognize a department or team's contribution in achieving PHS goals. You could offer a team lunch or add their photo to a newsletter when something positive has been reported. Positive contributions could be volunteering, raising funds, or supporting an employee who is not well.
Frequently asked questions
When is the right time to start a PHS Management System?
Like other health and safety approaches, this is an ongoing process. If this is a new approach in your organization, you may wish to consider the following:
- Employers who wish to recruit and keep talented staff can use a PHS management system to attract, energize and motivate their workforce.
- If time pressures are a concern, you may begin with one psychosocial factor at a time, such as workload management. This can open dialogue, identify solutions, and create space for continued improvement.
- Leading-edge organizations that already adopt a continual improvement philosophy can add PSH into existing policies and processes when they are reviewed or updated.
- If you’re in a toxic work environment, it’s important to address existing issues of violence, harassment, bullying, or discrimination. This helps ensure no further harm is done to the PHS of employees.
- Accepting responsibility that the work environment is currently difficult and openly recognizing changes are required can help reduce the need for people to justify or defend their current behaviours or positions. This isn’t about accepting blame for the situation, but instead, taking a position of responsibility for change. This opens the door to a new way of doing business.
- If there's been a traumatic incident at work, you’ll need to be sensitive to the current abilities of those affected. Supporting PHS at work could be helpful to the recovery process.
- If there are current labour disputes, this may not be the time to begin a process where management and the union are expected to co-operate closely. See Union and management cooperation to begin discussions, even through the collective bargaining process, in supporting PHS at work.
- If there are impending difficult business issues such as shutdowns, layoffs, terminations or redeployments, focus should be on limiting the risk on employees, not on beginning a new initiative.
- Those who are left at work may face increased work demands. This can make it more difficult for them to also become involved in the development of a new system. This shouldn’t prevent focusing on how PHS issues currently impact the workforce. Some impacts could include change management, grief at loss of co-workers, and increased workload pressures.
How do I assess how much time is required?
The size and scope of communications and plans will be affected by the complexity of your organization and the actions you put in place.
Some large organizations have two full-time employees dedicated to implementing the National Standard. Some small businesses have a group who meet for an hour each week to focus on PHS.
In both cases, it is expected that the amount of time needed in the first year will be more than in the second year. This is because you’re spending more time on assessment and planning in the first year. By the second year, you’re implementing and evaluating. In the third year and beyond, the time may be less again as you’ll likely be maintaining rather than developing.
As you start, create larger blocks of time to gather information and assess your current situation. Once your organization has developed a plan, dedicate a set amount of time on an ongoing basis. This could be even a small amount of time such as one hour each week.
*The Standard describes a worker as "a person employed by an organization or a person under the day-to-day control of the organization, whether paid or unpaid, which includes workers, supervisors, managers, leaders, contractors, service providers, volunteers, students, or other stakeholders actively engaged in undertaking activities for benefit to the organization." French: travailleur, travailleuse. [Reference: CAN/CSA-Z1000 (adapted wording) (see Annex G).] The term "employee" has been used throughout these resources and is intended to include the Standard’s definition of worker.